"With the fate of our beloved internet economy allegedly at stake, perhaps it's a good time to examine what Do Not Track is. How did the standard came to be, what does it do, and how does it stand to change online advertising? Is it as innocuous as privacy advocates make it sound, or does it stand to jeopardize the free, ad-supported internet we've all come to rely on?" Do Not Track is inherently flawed because it gives people a false sense of security. Other than perhaps well-known and accountable sites, nobody's going to abide by it anyway. We don't need nonsense like DNT - we need to educate people about that 'private browsing' button. Everybody's already using it for porn anyway; shouldn't be hard to let people know what other things it can be used for.

to create an online equivalent of the successful nationwide Do Not Call list — a single list of opt-outs that all telemarketers had to respect.

There are three things wrong with this statement, and any news source worth its salt should have made the effort to find this out:
1. The do not call list must explicitly be requested by telemarketers,
2. They do not technically have to respect it even if they request it. It's a massive list of phone numbers (sometimes with names if you put your name on it) that is out for public consumption. Even if legally they must respect it, you have no way to prove whether a company did or did not. As it's available easily, even if you make a claim against a company, it becomes your word against theirs and we know what the US government does when it comes to the word of a business against the word of an individual.
3. There are many exceptions to the do not call list, noteably for political campaign calling and other types of services falling under this type of category. This can be interpreted as broadly as one can get away with, like much of the laws here.
As a result of these things, one can hardly call this list a success. Do not track does, in fact, remind me of this list because, like the list, it's a standard that no one actually has to comply with. It's theater, pure and simple.

I do agree that the Do Not Call registry is not as good as it could be, because ANYTHING that is not considered advertisement (telemarketing) is allowed. Which unfortunately includes survey companies, charities and political organizations--but if you tell them not to call, they *should* listen (who knows if they will or not though).

But theoretically, a telemarketer *must* listen, because they're just opening themselves up to potential trouble if they don't and they end up calling back. I have received a grand total of One telemarketing call in the last year that I had my current phone and number, which was earlier this year (it was a Spanish-spoken recording). I immediately reported the number, not sure if it really had much of an effect or not (you can never tell), but I never heard from that number since. Then again, it's a cell phone and I don't give its number to everyone.

But by putting your number on the list, you are, in fact, making it directly available to the telemarketers... but really, they probably have every U.S. phone number there is anyway (probably buy them from phone companies, government organizations and other businesses), so what difference does it make, other than if you're on the list they have liability? The bad thing would be the "allowed" unsolicited callers buying the list and using it to conduct their business, but I really haven't got any political or survey calls either--except one survey call, to one of my Google Voice numbers, which I determined to be a company that does business with my bank. Called once, I didn't even know till half a month later because my phone never rang: they hung up as soon as GV asked them for their name.

My understanding is that the telemarketers are supposed to buy the list of numbers and obey it by adding all of the numbers to their database of numbers to NOT call. If they don't, they can get in trouble.

Well, here's the thing about the donotcall list. The scammers who are already doing illegal things, don't f'n care. The calls are routed through individual lines not tied through a buisness somehow ( skype??, burner cell phones?, forged Caller Id? I don't know). On calling back the number, I only ever get busy signals. I have one that has my number. I've reported each call to the FTC for the past year, but haven't got a response. Each time I also add it to a block list of numbers that simply don't ring, so they may be trying more than I actually realize.

You are fortunate that you don't have a problem with unsolicited robo-calls, I don't even know how many people have problems with them besides me (both my mobile and landline get them)... I suspect that IF you did get lots of unsolicited calls to begin with, you'd probably find the do-not-call violation reporting useless, unfortunately.

"If they don't, they can get in trouble."

The trouble is they don't get in trouble.

Edit:
(quoted from another post)
"In that case, probably nothing short of changing your phone number and making sure right from the start that it's not listed in the phone book is going to help."

Well, mine isn't listed, and since hanging up/unsubscribing has never worked, I try to get to a live operator to get them to take me off their list, they usually hang up when they find out I want them to stop calling, but one of them told me "I cannot take you off the list, there isn't one". They must be literally going through phone permutations for a given area code.